The Real Reason Malls Are Closing

[LizzieMaine]

He wrote another book along similar lines in the '90s called "BAD: The Dumbing Of America," in which he lambasted the malign influence of the Boys in creating an American culture that was not only "bad" but "BAD" in its silly pretentiousness. "Class" is funny in an arch, knowing way, but "BAD" is laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The cover illustration of "BAD" gives you an idea of the tone: an idiotically grinning Smiley face with a bloody bullet hole in its forehead. Highly, highly recommended.

 

[OldStrummer]

An extreme case of "gentrification" occurred in Times Square in NYC.

In the '70s, Times Square was a wasteland of drug users and dealers, prostitution, pornography and general graft. It's where addicts (of all types) who didn't have or had worn out (not judging) their family's and the social net's support structures went.

It was raw with graphic human despair and aggressive street-level crime and scams tucked right in the heart of a still-robust metropolis. Adding to the weirdness, the area had some normal functionality as the theater district was in and around it, as were other regular businesses from the "outside" world, like, well, The New York Times.

A trip through Times Square back then (reasonably well captured on the HBO series "The Deuce," but oddly worse in real life) was a phantasmagoria of human misery, chaos, crime, despair, needles, broken vials, discarded liquor bottles, hustles of every type ("hey, want to buy a new TV cheap") all emphasized by the blizzard of flashing neon lights running for several stories overhead and the honking horns of the always present traffic jams.

For reference, see the movie, "Midnight Cowboy."

 

[Edward]

I can't help but be amused by the people who bemoan the loss of "the way Seattle used to be," by which they mean in the waaay distant mists of, say, 1994, when they, as then young adults, came to town to be amidst the grunge scene.

If it ever occurs to them that they made their own significant contributions to what has become of the place since they blew in, they show no sign of it.

Yip, seen it all in part of London too - in my time, it's been most obvious in Camden, Notting Hill, and, increasingly, Brixton.

For reference, see the movie, "Midnight Cowboy."

Taxi Driver also captured old Times Square very well. As, indeed, did Watchmen, though Travis Bickle was a direct influence on the character of Rorschach. (Indeed, they actually meet in the prequel comic book released in more recent years).

 

[HanauMan]

Taxi Driver also captured old Times Square very well

I visited there in the very early 1980s. For me the film Times Square, with Robin Johnson, will forever sum up the atmosphere of the area at that time. Another good film from back then was Smithereens. I was in love with Bren (Susan Berman). I never lived in NYC but these two films reflect what I saw during those early visits. I was last back in NYC about a decade ago and what changes!

 

[Fading Fast]

Another crazy, crazy transformation is the tiny park (really just a very small plot of burned-out grass between streets) in the 1971 movie "Panic in Needle Park." It was (as so many smaller parks in NYC were back then) a frighteningly decrepit drug addict / dealer hangout that regular people stayed out of.

Now there's a small farmers market there on certain days. From heroin to locally sourced kale - you can't make this stuff up.

 

[vitanola]

"Middle class" the way it's used in the United States is an obfuscation. but in recent years it's also become a popular insult among the younger generation -- usually abbreviated to "boojhie" -- applying to the kind of people who think they're more culturally sophisticated than they really are, and to social-climbing pretentious strivers in general. Not really the same sense as I use it, but it does have value in describing the kind of people who go to an opera and then complain that it's in French.

I thought that the word for them was "booboisie".

 

[tonyb]

I thought that the word for them was "booboisie".

That's what Henry (no pinko, he) called 'em.

 

[Edward]

I visited there in the very early 1980s. For me the film Times Square, with Robin Johnson, will forever sum up the atmosphere of the area at that time. Another good film from back then was Smithereens. I was in love with Bren (Susan Berman). I never lived in NYC but these two films reflect what I saw during those early visits. I was last back in NYC about a decade ago and what changes!

I remember being told in 1996 by a guy who'd recently visited NYC that all the horror stories of Times Square had been "exaggerated" - "I found it was perfectly safe as long as you didn't hang out there past the time all the theatre crowds had gone home", he said. Of course that must have been around the time of Rudy's clean-up operation; by the time I visited in 2004, it was very much a hot tourist spot and as safe as anywhere I've ever been.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You could argue that Times Square in the Era was as much a tourist-oriented spot as it is today -- certainly it was one of the "must see" spots for visitors to the city. The theatre trade has always banked heavily on the out-of-town crowd, especially when the movie theatres became dominant in the 1920s. When Warner Bros. leased the Winter Garden in 1928 and turned it into a picture house, and when the Palace switched from two-a-day vaudeville to three-a-day, many old-timers were deeply offended at such blasphemy, and grimly declared that "Times Square sure isn't what it used to be."

 

[Fading Fast]

I remember being told in 1996 by a guy who'd recently visited NYC that all the horror stories of Times Square had been "exaggerated" - "I found it was perfectly safe as long as you didn't hang out there past the time all the theatre crowds had gone home", he said. Of course that must have been around the time of Rudy's clean-up operation; by the time I visited in 2004, it was very much a hot tourist spot and as safe as anywhere I've ever been.

Ed Koch started some improvements in the '80 and, yes, Giuliani had done a lot by '96. I lived across town from TS in the '90s and it was a completely different place from the '70s. Hadn't fully become Disneyland, but it was closer to that than the '70s dystopia.

 

[tonyb]

I visited Times Square in '81. Met up with an old friend and from there went to Yankee Stadium.

It didn't impress me as any more sleazy or dangerous than similar districts in several other cities. Maybe even less so.

 

[Old Mariner]

I tend to reflect at times on the 2000's with regards to mall shopping and the internet. I was not totally one or the other at the time (as I live in a rural area). Over time, though, I just gravitated away from malls. (I have also reflected on how the pandemic will no doubt hammer them.)

Not long ago, I thought about how it was that I got into Amazon, and I realized it was due to being given a Kindle for Christmas one year. I don't know if things would be different or not had I not been given that, as that was the "key". For most of my shopping offline, I went to thrift stores, antique shops, dollar general, and then walmart. I realize some folks hate these places but when you're the only one shouldering all finances, it's nice to get rather decent stuff inexpensively. I shopped where I could afford as I did not, and do not, have credit cards.

Over time, we got better places in the area - so, rather than Salvation Army in town, there was now a huge thrift store in a near by town with far more to choose from. Then TJMaxx and Marshalls came, which also helped as they carry natural toiletries for discount.

When the pandemic hit, I was fortunate enough to be "ahead of the curve" as far as having enough stuff for myself so I did not need to really go out. It also got to the point where I was now looking for very specific things which could really only be sourced online. (By then I also had some decent online shopping experience.) So, for me, in the end the transition away from malls were partly personal and partly environmental factors/circumstances. I am just glad that my "shifts" coincided with the "environmental shifts".

 

[tonyb]

It’ll be, um, interesting to see what becomes of store spaces left vacant, or soon to be, by the gutting of retail as we’ve known it. I can see it working out pretty well in some circumstances and not at all well in others.

I’m now of a grandfatherly age myself, and I still sometimes wish I could chew over the state of this world with my grandfather, and numerous other people of his era, for that matter. They lived through major upheavals and whole new ways of doing things. It would be worth hearing how they stayed upright when just about everywhere they looked things appeared to be shaking.

 

[The1940sHousewife]

I used to work in retail. The real reason why customer service is rude is because they aren't getting paid a living wage and 99% of customers they deal with during the day are rude and treat them like gum on the bottom of their shoe. This is why I give respect to them if I have a question about a certain item.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Kevin Smith said it best with the poster slogan for "Clerks:" "Just because we serve you doesn't mean we like you."

 

[Fading Fast]

Granted, the last time I worked retail was in the '80s. I was a gas station attendant for several summers and I was a salesclerk at Sterns department store all through college and even for a few years after I got my "real" post-college job as I still needed the extra money.

My rough experience was that 80+% of the customers were indifferent to perfunctorily polite to me, but not rude. 5-10-ish% were rude-ish to very rude and 5-ish% were very nice (ask me on another day and my percentage will probably change, but not by that much). Heck, my experience on sites like ours are about the same - only a few really rude/obnoxious people.

That said, all it took was one rude person to ruin your day. I'm not disputing what others have experienced, only stating what my years (decades ago) were like in dealing with retail. I will note that the gas station had more odd encounters and, on the whole, people were a bit less nice/more rude than at Sterns, but not dramatically so. I think the ability to drive away embolden some.